Half of a Yellow Sun Literary Elements

Contemporary postcolonial literature / historical fiction

The action takes place in the 1960s in Nigeria.

For the most part, the narrative utilizes three third-person limited perspectives: those of Olanna, Ugwu, and Richard. Excerpts from the book that was composed by Ugwu, "The World Was Silent When We Died," also close individual chapters.

The traits of the narrative vary depending on the time period depicted.

Early 1960s
- Tone: hopeful (Ugwu's advancement, new and prospering careers) with moments of tension (the affairs involving central characters)
- Mood: reassuring, relaxed, inviting (depictions of settings based on comfort and affluence)

Late 1960s
- Tone: eager and patriotic at first, then desperate and anguished as the human and social cost of the war becomes apparent
- Mood: ominous, tragic

The protagonists are Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene, Ugwu, and Richard - the central characters who are all loyal to Biafra. The Northern Nigerian side during the Nigerian Civil War is an antagonistic force, but Biafran soldiers also serve as antagonists when they force Ugwu to join the army.

The major conflict is between Nigeria and the state of Biafra, the two political entities fighting the Nigerian Civil War. This conflict is understood largely through the day-to-day forms of severe hardship that are inflicted on Biafran civilians such as Olanna and Ugwu. Persevering through the war and surviving deprivations, air raids, and massacres are among the motivating forces in the conflicts depicted throughout this novel.

In the late 1960s timeline, the horrific final stages of the war and Kainene's disappearance represent the climactic points of the narrative.

- Early on, Odenigbo places trust in Ugwu's intellectual abilities and tells Ugwu that someday Ugwu himself may be the "master." By the end of the novel, it is clear that Ugwu is an intelligent young man who can tell the story of Biafra with true mastery.

- Odenigbo's discussions with his academic friends about revolution and political upheaval foreshadow some of the character developments that unfold in Nigeria. From serving mostly as engaged political commentators, men such as Odenigbo, Professor Ezeka, and Okeoma become directly involved in the Biafran war effort.

Arguably, understatement is a technique that Adichie avoids; her priority in this novel, after all, is to reveal the inhumane realities of the Nigerian Civil War. Some of the less violent sections from the early 1960s nevertheless contain instances of indirection or understatement. Instead of directly explaining that he has problems getting an erection, Richard attempts to obtain herbs while veiling his true dilemma. Ugwu, for his part, makes requests for tear gas that veil his own strikingly sexual desire - to drug Nnesinachi so that he can have sex with her.

- Adichie's novel is meticulously researched, and Adichie herself provides the sources that she used to reconstruct the 1960s in Nigeria in a section at the end of the book. As she notes here, some of the characters were inspired by real individuals. Okeoma, for instance, was modeled on the renowned poet Christopher Okigbo.

- Ugwu's readings provide a few extremely significant allusions. At first, Ugwu reads British classics such as "The Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens. This cultural response - along with Richard's repeated allusions to the British statesman Winston Churchill - remind the reader of the British political and cultural sway over Nigeria. Later, Ugwu's discovery of the autobiography of Frederick Douglass introduces new allusions - to the quest for knowledge and freedom in the face of inhumanity that, in different settings, Ugwu and Douglass share.

Much of the important imagery in the novel exemplifies just how cruel the war was and how much it affected the civilian population. One important instance of such imagery is Olanna's vision of a woman carrying the severed head of her child. Bombings, beheadings, rapes, and deaths from disease are all portrayed in gruesome yet necessary detail, since imagery of this sort registers the full horror of the conflict and shows the reader how deeply affected characters such as Ugwu - who records some of the worst of the incidents in his notes - ultimately were.

Odenigbo tells Ugwu from the beginning that he will receive the two pieces of a double education: one dictated by the British and one involving real knowledge. Though Odenigbo here hints at a critical stance towards Britain, Odenigbo himself is thriving within a Westernized education and university system.

- The author draws a parallel between Odenigbo and Ugwu, two main characters in the novel. Both are Nigerians but they were raised in different circumstances, so Ugwu never got the chance to be educated in the same way as Odenigbo was. Because of this, the two have different belief systems and see the world in completely different ways, at least at first. Ultimately, the modern Odenigbo and the once-superstitious Ugwu come to parallel one another more and more, as Ugwu matures and proves his intellectual gifts as a student, teacher, and writer.

- As twins, Kainene and Olanna present several possibilities for parallels, though Adichie emphasizes the differences between Olanna (known for her beauty and intellectualism) and Kainene (known for her sarcastic sophistication and business sense). Still, each woman is in a relationship with a man who is unfaithful to her, and each bout of unfaithfulness (Odenigbo and Amala, Richard and Olanna) is rather short-lived.

Metonymy: The names assigned during the war underscore the perceived righteousness of the Biafran cause. While soldiers fighting for the country's independence are given laudatory nicknames like "Target Destroyer" and "High Tech," soldiers who invade Biafra from the North are repeatedly described as "vandals."

Synecdoche: By positioning named characters within larger groups, Adichie indicates that the struggles of Olanna, Ugwu, and Odenigbo are representative of the struggles of a larger whole. Olanna's traumatic flight from the North places her in the midst of a swarm of refugees who may themselves have lost family and friends, much as she did. Ugwu is but one of many young men who is depicted as being forced into the Biafran army, while Odenigbo is only one of the Nsukka "book people" whose life is somewhat threatened even after the hostilities cease.

Items of technology - weapons, planes, and cars - are given prominent roles both prior to the Civil War and during the Biafran Independence in the narrative, as though these objects have vitality and personalities of their own. In chapter 3, for instance, members of the new Nigerian elite are described as having "social conversations around one subject: ‘How’s the new car behaving?’”